Targeting predators

Thursday

Feb 28, 2008 at 6:00 AM

When cases of sexual predation on children come to light — such as the recent rape of a 6-year-old boy in the New Bedford public library — demands for tougher laws and flurries of legislative proposals invariably follow. Yet, lawmakers seem inexplicably reluctant to take action.

This week’s Statehouse hearing, bundling some 30 bills targeting sexual predators, seemed to give as much weight to testimony from offender advocates urging a go-easy approach as to the pain and psychic damage suffered by children victimized by sexual predators.

Even bills addressing the most heinous offenses find it difficult to gain legislative traction.

A case in point is a bill filed last year by state Rep. Karyn Polito that includes a provision mandating a minimum sentence for predators convicted of raping young children. Under current statutes, rape of a child younger than 12 can put the perpetrator behind bars for decades. Incredibly, however, judges also may simply place the rapist on probation. Sometimes the predator escapes even that restriction when the case is continued without a finding to be dismissed at some future date.

The Polito bill, sensibly, would prohibit such continuances. It also would establish a minimum sentence of 20 years for rape of a child under 12, 30 years for a second offense.

The length of the minimum sentences Ms. Polito proposes may be open to debate. And, to be sure, justice generally is best served when judges are allowed broad discretion to fit the punishment to the specific offense.

But no minimum prison time at all? What mitigating circumstances could ever justify allowing the rapist of a preadolescent child to walk free, perhaps to offend again and again?

Society has a duty to protect its most vulnerable members, and the Polito bill is a worthy starting point, in cases of sexual predation on children, for doing just that.